We were served a delicious supper following a guided tour of the facility. During the meal, a 90-year-old lady, Rose Arnsberg, whose family had been associated with the Heim for decades, addressed us, telling us about the history of the place and her family’s connection to it. Even at her advanced age she was still an active member of the board of directors of the Heim. The hall we were eating in was named after her husband, Paul Arnsberg, and a few years earlier a square in Frankfurt was reconstructed and renamed for her husband for what he had done for the city. Her husband also had authored a book, “Chronik der Rabbiner in Frankfurt am Main,” telling the stories of the Jews in Frankfurt with particular emphasis on the rabbis that served in the city covering the years 1074-1974.
Rose happened to be sitting at our table and was kind enough to give me a copy and inscribed it with a dedication to our meeting there. She later handed copies to all others in the group as well. She is an amazing lady, speaking clearly and distinctly when she addressed us, and her handwriting was completely legible in the dedication she wrote. When she wrote the date, she did not have to stop and think but wrote it with absolute ease.
We returned to the hotel, making a small detour to the city square, which had been renamed “The Paul Arnsberg Square.”
The afternoon of Tuesday, July 19, was going to be special for me. I was going to go to Schmitten in the Taunus Mountains, north of Frankfurt, the birthplace of my father, with hundreds of years of Strauss history.
Earlier in the morning the group was going to the Old Jewish Cemetery at the Boerneplatz surrounded by the Memorial Wall on which little rectangular blocks were inserted, one for each Jew deported from Frankfurt, for a total of 12,500 blocks. New names, not yet represented, are constantly being discovered. And, as we were told by Gabriella Bamberger, who was our official guide representing the Frankfurt Jewish Council, in a few years a new section with the additional names will have to be added. I found all the names except one of my uncles, aunts and cousins who were deported and eventually murdered in concentration camps in Poland. The one exception was my cousin Max Strauss, whose name for reasons unknown does not appear on any deportation list, although those of both his parents and his younger brother do. One possibility is that he was deported at a different time. Since he was a healthy young man, probably 17 years old, he might have been sent to a different destination, such as a labor camp, whose deportation list was not found. This requires further research, with no guarantee that an answer will ever be found.
The Jewish Cemetery had been leveled by the Nazis and unidentifiable broken gravestones were piled up in 10-foot-high mountains. The few unbroken ones with inscriptions are lined up against the walls.
The next stop was the “Museum Judengasse” right next door to the cemetery, but before we got there we were surprised by a heavy downpour, the first rain of our visit to the city. By the time we got to a shelter in the museum we were soaked to our skin. Since we had already seen the museum on our own the previous week, we decided to have the museum desk clerk call a taxi for us for return to the hotel.
(Before I continue with my description of the trip, I must apologize to the reader. The story of Schmitten that I will describe is going to be long and detailed and I want to explain why, giving the reader, who has patiently come this far, the opportunity to bail out. It will be long and detailed because this part of my story I am not writing only for the reader, I am writing it also for the author. My feeling about Schmitten is that it is not only my father’s birthplace, but I have come to view it as the birthplace of my family, the Strauss family. I have always considered myself in many ways more of a Strauss than a Nathan, maybe because of the geographic proximity and interaction with that side of the family when I was a child. Bad Homburg was my birthplace, but that is all it was. I had felt no sentimental attachment to it when I had visited it earlier. Although I very much appreciated the courtesy and attention we received during our visit, something else was lacking. We drove through the streets, saw the houses we had lived in, visited the Synagogue memorial, but that was all physical. I saw with my eyes, I heard with my ears, but I felt nothing in my heart.
My parents had moved to Bad Homburg, probably around 1924-25, and we lived there until 1936, when we were driven out. We had no other close family there when my parents moved in, and we left no close family, either living or in the cemetery, when we moved out. But when I walked around Schmitten, and saw the house of the Hotel Strauss, where my father and his father and possibly also his grandfather were born, I felt in my heart that this was my birthplace.
So, I decided to write about Schmitten, not only to describe our short visit, but also to convey to future generations whatever little information I could gather about the Strauss family and the Jewish community, however small, that once existed there.
So now dear reader, having taken a half a page to describe what awaits you in terms of detail and length, I have either whetted your appetite, or put you to sleep. Now is the time for you to act, and you do not even have to disclose to me which path you have chosen.)
(To be continued next week)
By Norbert Strauss
Norbert Strauss is a Teaneck resident and Englewood Hospital volunteer. He frequently speaks to groups to relay his family’s escape from Nazi Germany in 1941.
